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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24075487">stones wept and they let me in</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/badritual/pseuds/badritual'>badritual</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: Rebels, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Ahsoka Tano Needs a Hug, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Assisted Suicide, Author Is Aiming For An Eventual Happy Ending, Character Death, Desperation, Don't copy to another site, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Loneliness, Not Beta Read, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Slow To Update, additional characters to be tagged as they appear, descent into the underworld</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-05-08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-05-09</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-02 20:34:58</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Major Character Death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,519</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24075487</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/badritual/pseuds/badritual</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Rex’s body carries out its ultimate betrayal on a cloudless, pleasant afternoon.</i>
</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Ahsoka Tano &amp; Original Non-Human Character(s), CT-7567 | Rex &amp; Ahsoka Tano</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>37</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Denial</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>I got inspired to try my hand at this story after posting <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24040060">this fic</a> and then thinking about what the post-ROTJ future probably held for Rex. Then I started thinking about the comment about Ahsoka “being in the Underworld” since leaving the Jedi and my brain started whirring.</p><p>Title from "Come Home With Me II," from the Hadestown musical.</p><p>I intend to post regularly until I've gotten my sad TCW feels out of my system.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Rex’s body carries out its ultimate betrayal on a cloudless, pleasant afternoon. Ahsoka’s almost shocked by how ordinary, how <i>nice</i> a day it is; she’d always expected when Rex died the sky would unleash a torrent of rain and send lightning crackling across rapidly darkening skies to show its disapproval. That it’s positively beautiful is the insult of insults, the Empire’s final dagger sliding between her ribs.</p><p>On that pleasant, ordinary day, Ahsoka lets herself into Rex’s little hut and hangs her tote bag on a hook by the door. She does a quick scan of the tiny living space and, satisfied that everything is in order, she digs out a spoon, a canister of soup and a small tin bowl. </p><p>Rex lay on his pallet, his chest rising with shallow breaths. He hasn’t been well for the last few weeks, but Ahsoka tells herself it’s nothing. It’s just a bug. </p><p>She pours the still-steaming soup into the small bowl and brings it over to Rex’s bedside. </p><p>Ahsoka sits herself on the floor beside Rex’s straw-stuffed pallet and lifts a spoonful of the broth to Rex’s slightly parted lips.</p><p>“C’mon, Rex,” she cajoles him gently. “Open up.”</p><p>Rex coughs weakly, managing a small smile. “Not much of an appetite today, kid.”</p><p>“It’s your favorite.” She tries to ladle the broth into his mouth but he just lets it dribble back into the bowl. </p><p>“I think it’s time.” Rex lets out a low, shallow breath. </p><p>“All that to get out of some <i>delicious</i>—if I say so myself—homemade soup?” Ahsoka tries to make a joke of it, but it lands like a pile of bantha shit. “Rex…”</p><p>“I know you can feel it too.” Rex struggles to sit up, but he’s so weak he can barely lift his head. “I’m gonna need your help. Not strong enough anymore.”</p><p>“No,” Ahsoka says, setting the bowl down on the ground with a heavy thump. “You can’t ask that of me.”</p><p>“I’m not strong enough to do it,” Rex mutters, reaching blindly for her hand. “I got enough to get me over. You just have to clean up after I’m gone.”</p><p>Ahsoka relents, letting him catch hold of her hand and squeeze it. </p><p>“Why me?” she asks, sniffling back tears. She clings tightly onto his hand, like that might make him want to stay with her a little bit longer. “Don’t you have any brothers left to help you?”</p><p>“They’re all gone now,” Rex says, sighing. “It’s down to just you and me, kid.”</p><p>Deep down inside, she knows it would be cruel to keep him here when he’s ready to leave. It would be a kindness to see him on to the beyond. And yet…</p><p>Ahsoka slides her hand away from Rex’s to swipe her palm across her eyes. “What do I have to do?” </p><p>Rex flicks his eyes over to his desk, where he keeps a mess of old Republic-era comms systems—“Never know when they might come back in style,” he’d told her when she asked—a stack of datapads, and a small mound of inhibitor chips he’d taken out of the brothers he’d been able to save. A small gleaming vial rests on its side, next to pile of old, yellowed scrolls. </p><p>Ahsoka goes over to the desk and snatches the vial. “What is this stuff?”</p><p>“Supposed to put me to sleep right quick,” Rex says. “Painless stuff. Or so I hear.”</p><p>Ahsoka returns to Rex’s bedside and wedges herself in with him, pressing into his side. “Tell me,” she whispers.</p><p>Rex’s weathered fingers join hers on the small vial, thumbing open the cap. “Just gonna need you to dab a couple drops on my tongue. I hear the stuff’s strong enough to take down an entire herd of banthas in two clicks, max.”</p><p> Ahsoka lets out a harsh, dry laugh. “Quite the mental image,” she says, shifting next to him so that she can administer the proper dose. </p><p>Rex lifts his eyes to meet hers, clasping her free hand in his. “You’re the only one I trust to do this for me,” he says, his voice more rough-hewn than usual. His eyes are glassy, but his cheeks are defiantly dry. “I know it’s not exactly fair, but…”</p><p>Ahsoka dips her head and presses a kiss against his forehead. She shakes a few droplets of the liquid into Rex’s mouth and lets the empty vial fall from her hand. </p><p>Rex pulls her in close, an arm winding around her waist. She curls around him, holds him close, cheek pressed against her heartbeat, and waits.</p><p>When he does finally slip away from her, the suns are shining in a magnificent blaze through every window of Rex’s tiny hut. The cool, sweet scent of moonflowers waft in on a breeze and tickles at her nostrils.</p><p>Ahsoka opens her eyes and stares at the thatched roof overhead, and the shadows that splay across the wood support beams.</p><p>Rex has gone very still next to her, his cheek still pressed into her chest. His arm is still tight around her waist.</p><p>Ahsoka gently unwinds Rex’s limp arm from around her waist and climbs out of his bed. He lay so very still, eyes pointed up at the ceiling. She reaches out a shaking hand and drags her fingers over his eyelids.</p><p>Ahsoka feels adrift, and not simply because one of her oldest—only—friends is gone. She doesn’t know how the Clones took care of their dead. There are no Clone customs she can lean on, to pay Rex his final respects. </p><p>So, instead, she digs into the deepest recesses of her memory and pulls out the few Togruta burial customs she remembers reading about as a youngling. </p><p>After stripping Rex’s body of his nightclothes, she fills a clay bowl with water and finds a cloth. Kneeling beside his still form, she dips the cloth in water and then draws it over every inch of his body. She lingers on his hands, his scarred palms, thinking about the way he gripped his blasters, the way these callused hands had tenderly dug up battle-scorched earth with her to bury the dead after their world was rent in two. </p><p>Ahsoka ducks her head and presses a dry kiss against his knuckles. </p><p>His hut is entirely silent now, save the occasional chirp of a nearby firebird and the tinkling of wind chimes. </p><p>She hasn’t been this alone since Anakin fell.</p><p>Ahsoka tucks her feelings back inside herself and finishes cleaning Rex’s body, then quietly wraps him in the sheets he’d been lying on. </p><p>When she’s finished, she gently lifts him into her arms. There’s a valley not too far away, full of lush flowers and tall, whispering grasses. When she closes her eyes and trains her ear, she can hear the place calling to her, and she knows this is the place where Rex should rest.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Anger</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>
  <i>The only one left is Ahsoka.</i>
</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I have another chapter ready to post after this so I guess I won't abandon this one! At least not right away. 😬</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Ahsoka digs all night, alternating between an old spade she found in a collection of Rex’s gardening tools and her cold, stiff fingers, until there’s a hole deep enough for Rex to lie in. </p>
<p>She’s covered in mud and tears now, even blood after she scrapes her hands on errant rocks, but she can hardly feel any of it. She can hardly feel much of anything right now, but for the resounding emptiness that throbs within her. </p>
<p>Padmé is dead. Anakin is dead. Obi-Wan is dead. And now Rex has left her. </p>
<p>The only one left is Ahsoka. </p>
<p>Sitting back on her heels, she wipes a grimy hand down her face. She must look a frightful mess, but she can’t quite be made to care. </p>
<p>Ahsoka lifts her head to the sky, and the sprinkling of faint stars above.</p>
<p>“It’s not fair,” she calls out to the coldly indifferent stars. </p>
<p>She receives no answers from the looming night sky, not that she’d been expecting any. </p>
<p>Ahsoka curls her fists in the dirt and scoops it into Rex’s grave. It lands on his shrouded body, like a pattering of raindrops. </p>
<p>Something terrible wraps around her heart and twists, winding and winding, until Ahsoka feels like she might join Rex in his grave. Her breath comes in choked gasps, and tears sting her eyes, and she feels so overwhelmed she can’t pause long enough to draw a breath. </p>
<p>Ahsoka curls in on herself in the cold earth beside Rex’s grave and lets the feeling cover her like a cruel shroud. <br/><i>Alone</i>, a voice that sounds so much like Anakin’s cuts through her aching mind. <i>You are alone</i>.</p>
<p>Ahsoka scrabbles in the dirt, clutches at her head, trying to rip the voice out of her mind with dirt-caked fingernails. Grief tears at her, shredding her, leaving her in a crumpled heap. </p>
<p>Ahsoka curls her fingers into claws and throws her head back, screaming at the sky until her throat is raw. She can feel something oily and dark slicking its way through her as she howls out all her rage and pain. Before she can tamp it down, that blackness bursts out of her, staining everything within its reach.</p>
<p>She can feel a strange heat growing within her palms like hot coals and she knows, somewhere within herself, that she must control it. That she can’t let it escape her. </p>
<p>But she’s beyond caring. Now, all she can think—feel—is how alone she is. All she can see is red, everywhere.</p>
<p>Everyone she’s ever loved has been ripped away from her, either by the war or by cruel, uncaring fate. </p>
<p>Ahsoka lifts her hands to the sky. Heat pours out of her palms, flames spilling, licking at the trees and grasses nearby. Harsh, hot winds score her face and whip at her skin, sting her eyes, drawing forth another torrent of tears. </p>
<p>Flames roll off her fingertips, dancing on the wind in front of her before vanishing in the night. Another pulse of heat spills out of her palms, and then another, another.</p>
<p>
  <i>Let them hear me. Let them know. I’ve paid too much.</i>
</p>
<p>When the last flame has spilled out of her palms, Ahsoka collapses onto the scorched dirt next to Rex’s grave and darkness soon sweeps over her, pulling her under.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Bargaining</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>
  <i>“You called to me.”</i>
</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I'm not sure about this part. Things get a little [waggles fingers] <i>mystical</i>. Let's see how it goes.</p><p>This is all I've got at the moment. Hope whoever reads this gets something out of it. TCW finale catharsis, maybe? idk!</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>When she blinks her eyes open, she finds herself still lying next to Rex’s grave. It’s morning now, the suns of Taios rising over the distant mountaintops, casting a warm, buttery glow over everything her weary eyes can reach. </p><p>Ahsoka glances down at her dirt-stained hands, as the knowledge of what she’d had to do slowly sinks beneath her skin. </p><p>The cuts on her palms sting, as if to remind her of her loss of control. </p><p>Ahsoka floods with shame. </p><p>The clearing she’d picked for Rex’s final resting spot is scorched, trees and flowers and grass burnt away by her agony. The only spot untouched by the flames is that conspicuous mound of dirt where her friend’s body lay.</p><p>Ahsoka kneels beside it, reaching out an aching palm, and reaches within herself. She feels nothing, no lingering presence, nothing of Rex’s spirit. Nothing but a void where Rex’s life-force had once been, a gaping hole in the fabric of the Force where he’d been cut away </p><p>She truly is alone. </p><p>Grief threatens to overwhelm her again, tightening around her throat in an invisible fist. </p><p>For a moment, just the briefest of moments, Ahsoka lets herself truly feel the pain of Rex’s loss.  She feels as empty, as hollowed out as she did when Order 66 wiped out the Jedi order and the Republic fell. </p><p>A throat-rending sob escapes before Ahsoka can pull it back in. </p><p>The trees shift around her, leaves rustling in faint whispers, and she chokes back another sob that threatens to escape.</p><p>She’s <i>not</i> alone. Ahsoka jerks herself out of the dirt, raising her fists, acute fear prickling her skin and causing her montrals to ache.  </p><p>A hooded figure sits across from her on the other side of Rex’s grave, its head down, cloak drawn tight around its body. </p><p>“Who are you?” Ahsoka reaches for her belt instinctively, even though she no longer carries her lightsabers with her. She lets her hand fall to her side, though her fingers twitch for the hum of the lightsaber and the power within it.</p><p>She wouldn’t need a lightsaber to defend herself, but she misses the extra security they provided.</p><p>The figure doesn’t respond. It doesn’t even give the barest inclination that it’s heard her voice. </p><p>Ahsoka clenches her jaw. “Are you going to answer me or not?”</p><p>The figure lifts a skeletal white hand and pushes the hood away from its face. </p><p>Ahsoka is stunned, horrified to realize it <i>has</i> no face. Where eyes, nose, a mouth should be, there’s nothing but blank pale flesh. She can’t even tell if this ghoulish creature from her worst nightmares truly has no face, or if it’s wearing a mask.</p><p>Ahsoka stumbles back, heel catching on a fresh mound of dirt. She falls back over the grave, landing hard on her elbow. She struggles to scramble to her feet, but her panic only serves as a stumbling block. Ahsoka falls again, amongst grass and thistly weeds, bristles and thorns scratching at her skin.</p><p>The strange, ghastly creature—well, it hasn’t moved except to tuck its spindly arm back inside its black cloak. </p><p>Strangely, when she reaches out through the Force, she doesn’t sense any danger or malice coming from this odd figure. It seems almost serene as it watches over her—somehow—and her pathetic attempts to slap away the irritating, thorny weeds that claw at her. </p><p>“I guess I’ll be the one carrying the conversation then,” she mutters, plucking a bramble out of her damp, mud-stained top. </p><p>It beckons to her with a crook of its finger and Ahsoka finds herself drifting over to it, despite herself.</p><p>“You called to me.” A soft, almost whimsical voice dances about her, as if carried on the wind.</p><p>Ahsoka shakes her head. Her montrals throb, tender and sensitive, and her stomach rolls on waves of rapidly growing unease. “Can you help me?” she asks.</p><p>The creature tilts its blank face at her, yet says nothing.</p><p>“Can you bring him back?” She cringes inwardly at the desperation that claws its way out of her throat.  </p><p>The hooded creature regards her quietly for a few moments more, then finally breaks the silence that stretches between them. “Come with me.” It extends a hand, crooking its finger at her to follow.</p><p>Ahsoka hesitates, though the promise of saving Rex flares within her, urges her to follow. “I—I don’t even know who you are.”</p><p>The creature drifts closer and reaches out for her, fingers groping, until they graze her forehead. One long nail traces a pattern on Ahsoka’s skin, following the path her white markings make on her face. </p><p>“Come with me,” the almost melodious voice exhorts her. The figure turns, robes fluttering, and walks away.</p><p>Part of Ahsoka wants to refuse, but the ember of hope that burns inside her chest moves her feet forward, one step at a time. </p><p>And so she follows.</p>
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